


Clean

by devovitsuasartes



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-11-28 07:37:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20962889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devovitsuasartes/pseuds/devovitsuasartes
Summary: Eddie survives the final fight, but Richie saw him die in the Deadlights - and he's having a little trouble shaking it off.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fix-it fic. I also have a make-it-worse fic called [Unclean](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20925227).
> 
> Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.

Only Beverly knew why Richie started crying in the quarry lake: embarrassing, uncontrollable sobs that made his whole body shudder. All the Losers folded themselves around him, probably thinking that he was just breaking down from the stress of it all, and the relief of finally killing that fucking clown. 

But Richie could tell from the way Bev squeezed his hand so tightly it felt like it might break that she knew the real reason why he was crying. She must have seen it too, in the Deadlights. She must have woken up so many nights with visions of Eddie impaled and blood dripping out of his mouth.

Except that didn’t happen. Except Eddie was still here, by Richie’s side, pressing his forehead against Richie’s shoulder and maybe crying a little too, because Eddie’s always followed him, even now.

“I’m suh-suh-” Richie heaved, but he couldn’t get the apology out and the others didn’t seem to mind anyway. They stayed holding onto him until he ran out of tears to cry. In his ear Eddie was saying, _ Hey man, hey, it’s alright, we made it, Rich, we did it. _ And Richie thought _ I watched you die, motherfucker, you died right in front of me. _

Except he didn’t. He _ didn’t. _

When Richie finally calmed down enough to talk he said, “Alright, get off of me, Losers.” And they laughed, relieved that he was back to being an asshole. They started splashing around in the lake, cleaning off their faces and tousling with each other, while Richie stayed where he was and methodically rubbed at the lenses of his glasses with a corner of his shirt.

“Richie?” Eddie was there, still looking worried. “Pretty sure they’re clean. I mean, they’re not. They’re actually disgusting, but they’re not going to get any cleaner in this water.”

Eddie looked uncomfortable, grimacing at the sensation of mud between his toes, like he didn’t just wade through a fucking sewer. Inside, Richie’s brain was beating out a tattoo of _ you died, you died, I saw you die. _ But he didn’t say that. Instead he grinned, too wide, and put his glasses back on, and tried to dunk Eddie’s head under the water while Eddie shrieked in protest.

They stayed in the lake until they started to get too cold, and then they staggered back to shore, soaking wet. It was a long walk back to the hotel and they got a lot of disgusted looks from Derry’s locals - but that was nothing new to them. This town hated them the whole time they lived here. Maybe now that the clown was gone, there would be a little less hate in Derry.

Beverly kept glancing at him, like she knew that he still wasn’t OK, and because she kept doing it, Eddie kept doing it too - looking between them with his brow furrowed quizzically, probably wondering why Richie was still so subdued. He wanted to act normal, wanted to make jokes but…

_ R-Richie…? _

_ Oh fuck, just hold on, Eds, we’re going to get you out of here. _

_ It h-hurts, Richie. _

He didn’t see any of the others die. Not like poor Bev, who saw them all. No, it was just Eddie, impaled on that arm spike and lifted off the ground, his insides ripping beyond repair and then dying, dying down there in the cold and the filth, being left behind by the rest of them.

Richie closed his eyes as they walked, scrunching them shut in an effort to get the image out of his head. When he opened his eyes, for a brief moment, he saw the world misted red through a splatter of blood on his glasses and his whole body jerked in shock, a harsh gasp escaping his lips before he could stop it.

“Rich?” “Richie?” “You alright?” “Is he OK?”

There was a dull roaring in Richie’s ears. “I’m fine,” he said, and his tongue felt fat in his mouth. “Just really need a fucking drink.”

Someone wrapped a warm arm around his back, and Richie realized that it was Eddie. He didn’t feel dizzy any more, but he didn’t tell Eddie that, because he didn’t want to lose the feeling of Eddie’s hand rubbing between his shoulders, reassuring him that Eds was still here, that they didn’t leave him down there.

Back at the hotel, Richie stripped out of his cold, wet clothes, grabbed the bag out of the little garbage can and stuffed them into it. He was never going to wear those clothes again. He pulled on sweats and a T-shirt and a fresh shirt and then emptied the minibar, lining up all the little bottles of booze on the table and downing them one at a time until he had a good buzz going and the images of Eddie’s disemboweled corpse were starting to get a little fuzzy and the sound of that fucking clown laughing became muffled and…

The knock at the door nearly made Richie jump out of his skin.

“Who is it?” he yelled warily, the booze already making him lose some volume control.

“It’s me, asshole, open the door.”

Mentally steeling himself for opening the door to find the _ other _ Eddie standing there, blood pouring from his mouth, Richie walked slowly across the room and turned the handle, peering out through a narrow crack.

Aside from looking tired and a little embarrassed, Eddie was fine. He lifted his hands to show Richie a little pile made up of a towel and some spare clothes and a first aid kit.

“Can I use your shower? It’s just… I got stabbed in mine. And the curtain’s down, and…”

“No,” Richie said, slamming the door shut briefly, before opening it up again with a wide, sickly grin - just another joke. He stood aside and Eddie walked in, eyeing him cautiously.

“Did you already get drunk?” he asked. “We’re s’posed to be going out for dinner later.”

“But I have booze _ now _,” Richie countered, gesturing towards the empty bottles, then frowning. “Well, I did have.”

“If you survive a murder clown from outer space just to die from alcohol poisoning, you’re going to be really embarrassed.”

“Y’know, I’m still sober enough to rescind that offer of a shower.”

“Alright, alright…”

Eddie headed into the bathroom but didn’t lock the door - probably scared that Henry Bowers could still jump out at him, and needing a quick escape route. Richie tortured himself by straining to hear the soft sounds of Eddie taking off his clothes, and then fell back onto the bed, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes as the shower sputtered to life. He wasn’t ready for this, not ready to have Eddie - an adult now, not a scrawny little kid who hadn’t hit puberty yet - naked and wet in the next room. Not while Richie was drunk, and not while…

_ Richie opened his eyes and froze. Oh no, oh no no no. _

_ He was back in the cave, and Eddie was hovering over him again, telling him he killed It. But he didn’t, he didn’t, and Richie was frozen, couldn’t talk, couldn’t say anything… _

_ Eddie’s whole body jerked violently as his chest gave birth to that hideous spike. He looked down, touched it, looked back at Richie as his eyes filled with agony and blood filled his throat, spilled over his lips, no, Eddie, Eddie, Eddie... _

“Richie! Richie, wake up, dude, you’re just dreaming, it’s just a nightmare...”

Richie heaved in a huge breath and opened his eyes again. Eddie was leaning over him and without thinking Richie reached up and grabbed him, dragged him over the side of the bed, ignoring Eddie’s startled yelp. They hit the floor with a heavy thud and Richie instinctively covered Eddie’s body with his own, bracing himself for the spike through his back, prepared to die if only it meant he didn’t have to see _ that _ again.

“What the _ fuck, _ Tozier?” 

Reality slowly creeped back, and Richie lifted his head to find Eddie’s eyes wide in fear and concern. His hair was damp and his skin was still pink from the hot shower. He’d put a fresh bandage on his face and was wearing sweatpants and a soft long-sleeved shirt and Richie had very, very narrowly avoided kicking him in the balls on their way off the bed.

“Shit.”

Richie crawled off his old friend, leaned back against the bed and closed his eyes. He could feel his hands shaking.

“I’m a mess. I’m a fucking mess.”

He felt warmth at his side as Eddie sat down next to him. He was quiet for a long time - just the sound of the two of them breathing in the air, Eddie’s slow and even, Richie’s jagged and harsh and wet.

“It was the Deadlights, wasn’t it?” Eddie asked at last, quietly. 

Richie made a soft groan in his throat.

“You saw something. Like Bev did.”

Shaking his head, Richie spoke again at last. “I’m still fucking seeing it, man. It hasn’t stopped.”

He worked up the courage to look over at Eddie again. His face was close enough that Richie could still see traces of the kid he’d once been. Even though Eddie had crow’s feet now, and probably all the other forty year-old problems, like back hair and receding gums and prehypertension and all that shit, somewhere deep inside he was still that kid that Richie had fallen in love with before he even knew exactly what he was feeling. And maybe it was just fear of admitting what he had seen in the Deadlights that drove Richie to admit, instead, in a shaking voice:

“I fucking love you, Eddie. I love you, man.”

For a moment Eddie looked surprised at hearing something sincere instead of a joke, then his expression evened out. “Yeah,” he said. “I love you too, bro.”

Richie groaned and tipped his head back in frustration. He had a chance to back out right now, but…

“No, you don’t get it. It’s not just an I-love-you-man love. I mean I love you with my heart, and my dick, the whole package.” He opened one eye, risking a glance at Eddie, who looked suspicious. “I am not fucking around. I love you. I have since we were kids. I carved our fucking initials on the kissing bridge…”

“That was you?” Eddie interrupted sharply. “I saw it… when I was a kid. I remember now. I saw the R, and the E, and I thought about it, but…”

“I wanted to tell you,” Richie barrelled on rudely. “But I was so goddamn scared, so every time I felt like kissing you I just gave you shit instead.”

Eddie mulled that over. “You gave me a lot of shit,” he said. “Still do.”

Richie shrugged, an exaggerated comedy shrug. He wasn’t prepared for Eddie to say, quietly:

“I gave you a lot of shit too.”

He wasn’t prepared, either, for Eddie to tip his head forward and kind of nuzzle his cheek, then to shyly touch his mouth to Richie’s stubble.

A sickening wave of doubt washed over Richie, making him want to shove Eddie away. A tear rolled down his cheek before he could stop it. “Don’t fuck with me, Eds,” he pleaded pathetically. “Not about this. I swear, I’m not doing a bit here, I l-”

“Shhh, shhh,” and then Eddie was kissing him on his mouth, very gently, still shushing him, which was kind of ridiculous, and Richie was fully crying now, which made it gross. Yet somehow the kiss being gross and ridiculous was what convinced Richie that it was real, and made him able to kiss Eddie back, tentatively at first, then reaching up to take Eddie’s face in his hands and…

“Ow ow ow, not the face, not the-”

“Ah, shit, sorry.”

“God _ damn _ it, Richie.” And Eddie was holding his face, still in pain but also chuckling, which caused him more pain, so he was laughing and wincing in turn.

Richie, still not yet trusting this insane development, steeled himself, wiped his face with his sleeve, and said, shakily, “You don’t have to do this out of obligation, or anything like that, Eds. I swear, I’ll be fine, I’m a grown man. I can handle rejection but I can’t deal with pity, so if you’re…”

“What the fuck are you talking about, Trashmouth?” Eddie glared at him, still holding his cheek. “It’s bad enough you waited until we’re _ forty fucking years old _ to say anything when we could have been together this whole time. Now you don’t even believe me when I fucking kiss you on your mouth? You know how many germs there are in a human m-”

Richie leaned forward and kissed him, careful of his cheek this time, catching Eddie’s bottom lip and tracing the chapped surface of it with his tongue, softening it up. He needed to grab something, so he grabbed the collar of Eddie’s soft shirt and scrunched it up in his fist and used that to push Eddie to the floor and crawl on top of him and oh god, yeah, this was good, Eddie’s whole warm body up against Richie’s, his eager hands on the small of Richie’s back, rucking up his shirt.

Then of course Eddie ruined it by complaining, “I have back problems,_ Richard. _” And Richie groaned dramatically and then dragged them both onto the bed, refusing to actually stand up and do it, laughing as Eddie fell on top of him and they got right back to it. Eddie kissed him, kissed his neck, rubbed his knee against…

There was a pause, filled with the drag of harsh breathing. “Shit on a brick,” Richie sighed. “Figures this finally happens and I have whiskey-dick.”

Eddie huffed out a laugh against his neck, then said, “We should probably slow down anyway. Gotta get to dinner.”

“Fuck dinner.”

“The guys will…”

“Fuck the guys. I mean, I know we just killed a monster together but fuck ‘em.”

Eddie laughed again, and shifted against him, just enough to make it very clear that he _ didn’t _have whiskey-dick. It was a little startling for Richie, to feel Eddie against his thigh like that and apparently not embarrassed about it at all. But it was that, finally, that chased away Richie’s last threads of doubt that Eddie might just be humoring him or taking pity on him. That was definitely not a pity hard-on.

Sadly, Eddie shifted away to lie on his back. Richie intertwined their fingers, then lifted their hands to look at the way they fit together. He had a vague memory of a similar sight from when they were kids, but instead of being smooth and pale their hands were now lined and hairy-knuckled and marked with small scars and, in Eddie’s case, a band of pale skin where his wedding band had been.

The sight sobered them up. Even without looking at him, Richie could sense the sudden melancholy in Eddie. The fact of his marriage hung in the air between them, huge and unavoidable.

“I lost my wedding ring down in the sewer,” Eddie said quietly. “How’s that for a fucking sign, huh?”

Richie rubbed his thumb over the back of Eddie’s hand. “Why’d you have to go and get married, Eds?” he sighed.

Eddie nudged him in the ribs. “Well, first of all, after I left Derry I barely remembered that you even existed. And Myra… she was sweet, I guess. Anxious about fucking everything, but sweet. But…” He let the word linger in the air.

“But you married your fucking mother,” Richie finished for him.

“I married my fucking mother,” Eddie concurred in a rush, reaching up with his free hand to cover his face. “God, Richie. You think you’re a fucking mess? I’m a Freudian nightmare. You sure you want to deal with this?”

He sounded so miserable that Richie rolled on top of him, pinning his wrist to the bed, and kissed him again, mindful of the wound in his cheek, kissing his mouth and then his eyelids and his hairline and then returning to his mouth, still thrilled that he was allowed.

“Actually, I changed my mind,” he whispered tenderly. “Don’t take it personally, but I saw Ben’s abs in that wet T-shirt and now my heart has moved on…”

Outside, Bill heard shouting and wrestling and decided to send a text about dinner instead of knocking.


	2. Chapter 2

They did go out for dinner, despite Richie’s reluctance, because who knew when all the Losers would next have a chance to sit down to a meal together. No one felt like Chinese food that time around, so they went to an Italian restaurant just outside of town instead. 

Richie ordered lasagna and a bourbon and then started slyly stroking Eddie’s ankle with his foot under the table. Annoyingly, Eddie didn’t even react - his poker face surprisingly solid. When their drinks arrived, Richie raised his glass in the air and said, “Here’s to finally killing that fucking clown.”

There was a chorus of cheers and clinking glasses around the table, and it was only when the noise died down that Richie noticed the waitress was still lingering at the table, looking suddenly pale. She was about their age - maybe a little older. Once she realized the Losers were staring at her expectantly she cleared her throat and said, in a timid voice:

“Did you say you killed the clown?”

It occurred to Richie that their toast might have sounded kind of sinister to an outsider. Breaking the silence, Bill started, “We, ah, it was just a…”

“The one in the sewers?”

Glances were exchanged around the table, Richie catching Eddie’s eye, almost startled by the seriousness of his expression.

“Yes,” Beverly said at last, softly. “Have you seen it?”

The waitress nodded, hugging the empty tray to her chest. “It look my little sister,” she said in her wispy little voice. “When we were kids.”

Richie chanced a look at Bill, whose eyes are suddenly filled with pain. “I’m sorry,” he said. “W-we killed it, though. It’s gone. For good.”

The waitress let out a shuddering breath. “When kids started going missing again, I was so scared,” she confessed. “I grounded my three, just to keep them at home. They hate me for it, but I didn’t want them going out while that _ thing _ was out there.”

“It’s gone,” Beverly assured her, with a steely gaze. “We watched it die. We’re sure.”

The waitress looked at her, expression shifting from fear to relief. She clenched her jaw, and dashed away a tear from the corner of her eye. “No one believed me,” she whispered. “About Betty. And it was almost like… no one really wanted to know what happened to her. Not even my parents. It was like they were all looking away, on purpose.”

The silence that followed was broken by a man rudely snapping his fingers at the waitress from a few tables away. She sniffed and said, in a voice that was almost normal, “Your food will be out soon,” then hurried away.

The waitress left behind a sober mood. Like the others, Richie caught himself staring at the empty chair. They’d booked a table for seven, so that Stan would have a place, even though he wasn’t here any more. 

Abruptly, Richie announced, “Eddie and I hooked up.”

Across the table, Eddie’s jaw dropped. He made a series of strangled noises before finally unsticking his throat and saying, “We did not. I… we just kissed! We didn’t… Richie, you _ asshole_.”

Richie glanced around the table, checking the reactions. Beverly looked smug, Mike looked utterly unsurprised, Ben was grinning widely, and Bill looked completely floored.

“Saw that coming,” Beverly said, taking a sip of her drink.

“Did you know about this?” Bill asked, directing the question at Mike.

“I figured it out when Richard started playing footsie with me under the table,” Mike deadpanned.

Furrowing his brow, Richie lifted the tablecloth and peered under it and, yup, whoops, his aim had been totally off.

“Richie!” Eddie hissed, looking scandalized, which was the reaction Richie had originally been going for.

“At what point would you have stopped me?” Richie asked Mike with a grin. “Because I was creeping into thigh territory at one point there.”

“Hey, it’s the most action I’ve had in a while,” Mike responded, raising an eyebrow.

The group burst into a hubbub of laughter - even Eddie, who had his head in his hands, the convulsions of his shoulders giving him away. For the next few minutes the conversation revolved around how, in hindsight, Eddie and Richie hooking up was inevitable. Everyone politely avoided bringing up the subject of Eddie’s marriage in favor of making jokes and ribbing Eddie to see how red his face could get.

The conversation moved on once the food arrived - to Bill’s books, and their newly recovered childhood memories, and their plans for the future. Once they’d all had a few drinks, they made plans to meet again for dinner at least once a year, to keep Stan’s memory and the memory of what they’d done alive. Beverly and Ben cosied up together, his arm wrapped around her. 

Richie blinked, and for a moment he saw them all as they had been: Bill, skinny and stammering; Mike, too serious for his young age; Ben, chubby-cheeked and wearing a nerdy shirt, with his arm around Beverly, her hair cropped and her expression mischievous. And Eddie, so short his feet didn’t touch the floor, smirking at Richie as he flicked a bit of bread roll at him across the table. It struck Richie in the face and when he blinked again they were all grown-ups again.

By the time their dessert plates had been cleaned, Eddie was sitting next to Richie and leaning his head on his shoulder, tipsy from drinking rum-and-cokes all night. Richie scratched his fingers through Eddie’s hair and then kissed him on the top of his head, just because he could. There was a fight when they all tried to insist on picking up the check (except for Mike, who was too smart to avoid a free meal on a librarian’s salary), and in the end they settled up by throwing random bills onto the plate until it added up to the full amount plus a ridiculously generous tip.

After piling out of taxis back at the hotel, Ben and Beverly both headed up together, no doubt to share a room for the night. Having sobered up a little, Richie was suddenly uncertain. He hesitated outside his door, gently taking Eddie by the wrist. Eddie had on his serious face, his mouth all tight and small, and he looked Richie in the eyes hesitantly.

“Should we, um. I can… I guess I’ll say goodnight?”

A flash of fear spiked through Richie’s chest. “No,” he blundered. “I mean…” He sighed and pushed his glasses up his nose as a way to avoid looking directly at Eddie. “Look, I’m pretty sure the second I go to sleep I’m going to see… what I saw in the Deadlights. And I just really need for you to still be around when I wake up, so I know it didn’t happen.”

Eddie’s expression turned so serious his lips practically disappeared. “So it was me,” he said. “What you saw…”

“Please stay,” Richie begged. “Please. We don’t have to fuck, or do anything, I’ll be a total gentleman. I just need to know you’re still here.”

For a moment, it looked like Eddie was going to try to say something sexy. But instead he ducked his head and nodded and said, “OK, that works. Um. I just need to brush my teeth. And wash my face. And put my retainer in…”

“Stop, stop, I can only get so hard,” Richie groaned, shoving Eddie away playfully.

In the end Eddie just brought his whole toiletries bag into Richie’s room because, quote, “This takes a while.” Richie toed off his shoes and kicked his way out of his jeans and fell face-first into bed. It occurred to him that he hadn’t slept since they killed Pennywise, and he was exhausted right down to his bones. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Eddie flossing methodically, and then gurgling and swishing mouthwash for exactly thirty seconds, and then rinsing his mouth again with water, and wondered sleepily how anyone could ever have the time and motivation for that shit.

Eddie’s night-time routine took so long that eventually Richie dozed off, and was woken by Eddie sliding in next to him in a soft, baggy T-shirt and pyjama pants. Instinctively, Richie slid an arm behind him and drew him in close, and Eddie rolled half on top of him and rested his head on Richie’s chest. After about five minutes, though, they realized that this wasn’t going to work as a practical sleeping position, not without both of them waking up with horrible aches and pains, so after some shuffling around and hushed arguing they ended up on their sides, Eddie curled against Richie’s back with an arm draped loosely around his waist.

_ Fuck, I’m the little spoon, _ Richie thought, and that was his last thought before he drifted off into a deep and dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look I might actually get around to smut at one point but for now Eddie and Richie are middle-aged and it's been a very long day.


	3. Chapter 3

Richie woke up still crying, loud sobs and moans, his whole body drenched in sweat and shaking. He was in his own bed, surrounded by his belongings, and the cave and its collapsing ceiling were gone, but the grief remained in his chest - heavy and horrible and all-encompassing.

“No, no,” Richie wheezed, scrambling for his phone and knocking it to the floor in his haste. He lunged over the bed and fumbled for it in the dark, swearing profusely until his fingers finally closed around it. His hands were so sweaty the thumbprint reader didn’t work and Richie half-screamed in frustration as he tried to control his shaking fingers enough to type in his passcode and then find his list of recently called numbers.

“Come on, come on, come on,” Richie was saying, before it even started ringing. His face was drenched in tears and snot and he turned his head to wipe it on his shoulder. The melancholy _breep-breep_ of the phone ringing with no answer echoed through his head, every passing second with no response filling the well of terror in his chest.

There was a click, then,  _ “You have reached the voicemail box of…” _

“FUCK!” Richie screamed, hanging up. His fingers slipped over the smooth surface of his phone screen as he tried to redial, but then the phone started ringing in his hands. It took Richie less than a second to answer.

“Eddie?”

_ “Mmm-sssup?” _

“Where the fuck were you?”

_ “S’fucking sleepin’, asshole.” _

Richie leaned back against his headboard taking slow, shaky breaths, trying to calm his heart rate down. His whole body was shuddering weirdly in a way that he couldn’t control.

“Eddie,” he said again, needing to hear Eddie’s voice.

_ “Yeah, ‘m still here.” _ It sounded like Eddie was drifting off to sleep again.

“Talk to me. Just for a minute.”

There was a long-suffering groan. _ “Iss four in the goddamn mornin’, Rich.” _

“Please, Eds.”

A staticky huff of breath, and then:  _ “You have the nightmare again?” _

“Yeah.” Every night, since they’d said goodbye to each other at the airport. Richie didn’t always call Eddie up. Sometimes he managed to control himself and trust his own mind that Eddie was still alive, not buried under the rubble of the Neibolt House. But this time the nightmare had been viciously intense, and left Richie with an awful doubt.

The only night he hadn’t had the nightmares was that first night they’d spent in Derry. Eddie, warm at Richie’s back, had been like a talisman warding off the visions from the Deadlights. But now Eddie was 3000 miles away, and Richie had nothing to protect him.

There was a soft, guttural sound down the phone. Eddie was snoring.

“Eddie, wake the fuck up!”

_ “Nnng,”  _ Eddie groaned in protest, and Richie heard the rustle of him rolling over in bed. “ _ Alright, ‘lright. Tell me what to talk about, m’brain’s stupid.” _

“Tell me… I dunno. About your new place.”

_ “‘S a fuckin’ condo,” _ Eddie sighed.  _ “Fuckin’ expensive and depressing as hell. Where divorced guys go to die. All the furniture came with it. I hate it.” _

“Should’a got a prenup,” Richie said shakily, finally calming down. “You could have kept the house and kicked Myra out.”

Eddie chuckled wearily. _ “Mean. Nah, no prenup. I’m pretty fucked. Least I don’t feel so bad ‘bout leaving Myra, since she’s getting half my money.” _

“She still pissed?”

_ “No shit.” _

“Did you explain that you’re leaving to be with Richie Tozier’s dick? I’m sure she’d understand. It has a reputation.”

Eddie groaned. _ “If only I could be with Richie Tozier’s dick without having to be with Richie fucking Tozier.” _

“Sorry, we’re a package deal, baby.”

They hadn’t actually had sex yet. More than once, Richie had regretted not sealing that particular deal before they parted ways. They’d gotten close, the morning after killing Pennywise, when they woke up in the same bed with morning wood and started kissing and kind of lazily dry humping. But Eddie had been hesitant about having sex before he’d even separated from Myra, and, as sappy as it sounded, Richie didn’t want there to be anything seedy or shameful about the first time they had sex. God knows he’d had enough sex he was ashamed of already.

_ “Wish you were here,” _ Eddie said softly. He was only this sappy when he was half-asleep. _ “Keep gettin’ scared ‘m gonna forget you again.” _

Richie smiled, his anxiety finally easing away. “I miss you too.”

_ “Should come to New York.” _

“I will, I will. I just have a few more shows booked, and Steve will hang me by my balls if I run out on them. Two more weeks and I’ll be there.”

_“Mmm.”_

Steve hadn’t been impressed when Richie had announced he was moving, but Richie had sarcastically pointed out that there wasn’t exactly a shortage of comedy clubs in New York. His current tour was at an end anyway, the TV special had been recorded, and Richie planned to spend the next six months trying his hand at writing his own material. He could test it out in basement venues and small comedy clubs, refine it until he had an hour-long show that was completely his. He was even thinking of writing about Derry, and about his nightmarish childhood, maybe peppering in a few jokes about Eddie’s mom. Hell, there was enough material there.

Eddie was snoring again.

This time, Richie didn’t try to wake him up. He put his phone on speaker and set it back on the dresser, the sound of Eddie’s quiet little snores filling the air. Lying back down, and praying even this small connection to Eddie would be enough to keep the nightmares away, Richie closed his eyes and let sleep drag him back under.


	4. Chapter 4

Eddie met Richie at the airport. He was standing right by the Arrivals doors, like he was anxious that Richie might somehow get past him, and he had his hands in his pockets like he didn’t know what to do with them. Richie grinned when he saw him and for some unfathomable reason made finger guns, but there was a barrier between them so they had to awkwardly walk along, glancing up at each other occasionally, until finally the barrier ended.

“Hi,” Richie said, and was struck by a sudden terror that Eddie would expect a kiss on the mouth, which… shit, Richie had been in the closet way too long to just _ do _ something like that. 

Fortunately, Eddie rescued him by saying “hey” back and going in for a firm but convincingly bro-ish hug. Richie took the opportunity to breathe in Eddie’s smell - just musky deodorant and detergent, no cologne - and then drew back to look at him.

“Fuck,” he said, wincing at the scar in Eddie’s cheek. For some reason he hadn’t expect much more than a subtle line. Instead, Eddie looked like some poor imitation of an action hero, the edges of the scar harsh and a little puckered. 

Eddie touched his face self-consciously. “It got infected,” he explained. “Maybe splashing around in all that shit and piss right after Bowers attacked me wasn’t such a good idea.”

“Oh my god,” Richie said dramatically. “Your mom was actually right about something.”

“Already, with the mom jokes.”

They walked to Eddie’s car, and there was a weird kind of silence between them that Richie didn’t like. It had only been about two months since they left Derry, and they’d talked on the phone since then plenty of times, but Richie wasn’t sure what to do now that they were actually together. He wasn’t sure what Eddie expected from him, and it was impossible to tell by looking at Eddie. His mouth was all small, the way it got when he was worried about something, but beyond that he was a closed book.

They got into Eddie’s car, a Volvo that looks like a rental, which would make sense given that Eddie’s other car got totalled. Eddie opened his mouth, hesitated, cleared his throat and then asked, “So, where to? You got a, uh, AirBnB or something?”

Richie stared at him stupidly. They hadn’t ever actually discussed where Richie was going to be staying when he got to New York, but Richie had always kind of assumed that he’d be staying with Eddie. It just seemed obvious. Now, though, he looked back and realized that it was kind of insane to just think he was going to be moving in with Eddie right away when they’d only been together for one night, and hadn’t done anything more than kiss. It wasn’t normal to want to move in with someone after that.

Eddie was staring straight ahead, looking kind of furious for some reason, so hurriedly Richie said, “Um, it’s actually a hotel. Hang on, I’ll just look up the address on the.. The booking confirmation.”

He fumbled with his phone and angled it away from Eddie while he searched “hotels new york.” He picked one that seemed nice without being horrifically pricey and told Eddie the address, which Eddie then put into his GPS.

Things had gone from being a little awkward to downright chilly, which Richie thought was incredibly unfair because he hadn’t _ done _ anything. Had Eddie figured out he was lying about having booked a hotel? Richie clenched his jaw and looked out of the window while they crawled through the agonizingly slow New York traffic.

Finally, 20 minutes of silence later, they pulled up outside Richie’s supposed hotel. Eddie helped him pull his two suitcases out of the trunk, and then they just sort of stared at each other for a moment.

“So, uh…” Richie started. “I guess I’ll just…”

“Yeah, good idea,” Eddie said, his brows knitted together, his mouth tight. “Call me later, or whatever, and we can… get dinner?”

“Right.” Richie slapped on a big false grin. “Smell ya later, Eds.”

He walked away, the words _ smell ya later _ echoing through his head as he cringed at himself. Stepping up to the desk, he asked about a room - but there was bad news.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Tozier.” The receptionist was obviously a fan, because she looked torn between being starstruck and desperately disappointed. “We don’t have any spare rooms at all. There’s a conference in the hotel all weekend and we’re fully booked. I’m _ really _ sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Richie said, plastering on another false smile. “Thanks anyway.”

He hauled his suitcases back out through the stupid revolving door, already fumbling for his phone to book an Uber, when he realized that Eddie was still parked in the drop-off bay. He had his arms folded on the steering wheel and his head resting on his arms. At the sight of him, something that had hardened inside Richie’s chest softened again.

He climbed back into the car, and Eddie jumped and then stared at him wildly.

“I didn’t book a hotel,” Richie admitted in a rush. “I assumed I’d be staying with you.”

Eddie let out a long, shaky breath. “I assumed that too.”

Richie glared at him incredulously. “Well, what the fuck?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know, I panicked! I saw you at the airport and I suddenly started second-guessing everything and, and…”

The bottom dropped out of Richie’s stomach. “Do you not want to do this any more?”

“No! I mean, fuck, yes, of course I do, Richie. I’m just a mess, I don’t know how to do any of this, I don’t know how it’s supposed to go and the last time we saw each other we killed a giant spider-clown from another dimension and that’s really throwing off my compass for what’s normal!” Eddie’s breath was getting raspy, and he instinctively reached for his inhaler before apparently remembering he didn’t have it any more. He buried his face in his hands and groaned.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Richie said, reaching over and grabbing Eddie’s hand and holding it tightly until Eddie’s breath started to even out. Steeling himself to say it out loud, in semi-public no less, he murmured, “I love you, Eds.”

Eddie looked up at him, his expression still pained, but easing a little. “I love you too,” he mumbled, sincere but embarrassed.

Richie squeezed his fingers and said, softly, “So let’s go back to your place and bang it out.”

“Jesus _ Christ.” _

“What?” Richie asked, laughing like the utter shit he was.

“Beep-fucking-beep, Richie.”

Eddie was right about his condo being depressing. It still looked like a show home, sparse and sleek and decorated with grey furniture that looked stylish but not at all comfortable. Richie dumped his suitcases haphazardly in the hall, glad to add a bit of mess to the place. Eddie led the way to the open plan kitchen slash dining room slash living room, and then stood by the couch with his hands in his pockets looking lost and uncertain. The sight made something swell in Richie’s chest.

They stared at each other for a moment, and Eddie opened his mouth, probably to ask Richie if he was hungry or if he wanted a cup of coffee. But instead of saying anything polite he just sighed and snapped, “Get the fuck over here, Richie.”

Richie rushed forward, grabbed Eddie by the lapels of his jacket and shoved it halfway down his arms as he kissed him, moaning a little into Eddie’s mouth. Eddie shook his hands free of the jacket impatiently, letting it drop to the floor, and then grabbed Richie a little violently by the head, crushing their mouths together. Richie’s glasses fogged up and then went all skewed on his face, and Eddie reached up and pulled them off and threw them somewhere. 

Well, if Eddie was going to be rude, two could play at that game. Richie shoved his hands up the back of Eddie’s shirt, scraping nails down his warm skin. “Oh fuck,” he was gasping, embarrassingly. “Oh fuck, Eddie.”

They backed up and kind of fell onto the ugly fashionable couch, which at least had a deep seat. Eddie just hovered over Richie for a moment, staring into his eyes, his expression horny and conflicted. Then he lowered himself down so that they were lying facing each other, their legs tangled, Richie thumbing the join between Eddie’s ear and jaw and neck. But now that they’d gotten this far, he had to know…

“Have you done anything with a guy before?”

Eddie hesitated, then shook his head, pressing his forehead against Richie’s.

“Listen, Richie. I’m not… good at this.”

“This?”

“Sex.”

Fighting back every urge he had to make fun of Eddie for that revelation, Richie looked him in the eyes and asked, “Who told you that you weren’t good at sex?”

“Everyone I ever had sex with.” Eddie choked out a humiliated laugh. “Both of them.”

Well, fuck. “Myra, and…?”

“Just a girl in college. She kept coming onto me at a party, and my friends were watching, and I didn’t want to turn her down in front of them.” Eddie covered his face. “We went upstairs and it was… awful. Just awful. It was a little better with Myra, I guess, but she hardly ever wanted to have sex.” He laughed again miserably, through his fingers. “God, that was one of the only good things about our marriage. That she didn’t expect me to have sex with her.”

Richie didn’t even feel the need to make a joke about that. It just made him feel so, so sad for Eddie.

“So you’ve never been with a guy?” he asked again, as gently as he could.

Eddie pressed his lips together, caressing Richie’s side with his thumb, up and down, up and down. “My mom… she got it into my head that if you have sex with a guy, you’ll get AIDS. Even if it’s just once. And I couldn’t get it out of my head. So I never did.”

“Are you sure you’re…?”

“I watch gay porn,” Eddie confessed in a rush. “I mean, I wasn’t sleeping with Myra so I’d just, you know, jerk off in the bathroom when she was out, or downstairs. And I always watch gay porn when I’m doing it. It’s the only thing that works.”

Oh god. Poor Eddie. Richie tried to bat away a vision of him jerking himself miserably in the bathroom, for_ years, _ instead of having actual sex with another person. No wonder he thought he wasn’t good at it.

“I haven’t had sex sober in years,” Richie offered, because it suddenly felt very important to let Eddie know he wasn’t the only one with a pathetic sex life. “Maybe… shit, maybe not ever. See with girls, if you’re drunk you can blame that on not being able to perform. And if you’re high, you can blame that for getting it on with a guy. Just say you were really fucked up and didn’t know what you were doing.” He got momentarily distracted by Eddie’s knee between his legs.

“You’re sober now,” Eddie pointed out, hooking the back of his ankle around Richie’s calf and pulling them closer.

“Still fucked up and don’t know what I’m doing.” But he knew exactly what he was doing.

They got back to making out, and things quickly got heated until Eddie was boldly shoving his hand down the front of Richie’s jeans, which led to Richie’s jeans coming off, and then Eddie’s, and then Richie’s shirt. Eddie did a weird thing with his T-shirt where he pulled the front up and hooked it behind his head, so his torso was exposed but he still had the shirt on around his shoulders. Richie realized that this was probably something that Eddie had seen in all that gay porn he watched.

Things were messy and disorganized for a while, just Eddie on top of Richie and grinding against his stomach while the two of them kissed and groaned into each other’s mouths. After a while Richie couldn’t take the randomness of the stimulation any more and took them both firmly in the same hand. When he did that, Eddie made this loud sobbing sound and started jerking his hips hard, and it didn’t take long for either of them after that.

As soon as he finished coming, Eddie shrank away, shivering with over-stimulation. His dick was still red and fat against his thigh, and looked almost painful. When Richie went to touch it again, out of curiosity, Eddie winced and said, “_Ah,_ no, fuck off,” which was kind of hilarious. Changing tactics, Richie pulled Eddie’s shirt the rest of the way off while he was still exhausted and pliant, noting as he did so that Eddie actually _ didn’t _ have any back hair. Lucky bastard.

Eddie was actually in kind of great shape for a guy in his forties, his torso lean with just a smattering of hair in the middle of his chest. Richie scratched his fingers through it, and Eddie’s shivers grew more violent.

“You’re not bad at sex,” Richie said, quietly and sincerely. “I think you’re just bad at sex with women.”

“Wonder why,” Eddie responded sardonically, his eyes still closed.

Once they had both gotten their breath back, they realized that they’d fucked themselves to the edge of starvation. Eddie ordered more takeout than the two of them could possibly eat and they ate it in front of the TV, watching an old George Carlin show that Richie knew word-for-word. Sleepy from sex and too much Thai food, he laid down on the couch with his head in Eddie’s lap, and they watched the show in companionable silence, Eddie’s fingers resting in Richie’s hair.


	5. Chapter 5

Maybe it was weird that Richie had moved into Eddie’s apartment before they’d even had sex (technically, as it turned out, only about 10 minutes before they had sex). Eddie had dated Myra for a long time, over two years, before he finally succumbed to the realization that he was too weak to break up with her and married her instead. But that hadn’t been an unfamiliar living situation; in fact, it had been horribly familiar.

This was different. For starters, the apartment was almost as new to Eddie as it was to Richie, so it didn’t feel like Richie moving into his space. Then, immediately after Richie’s arrival, they were both too distracted by the honeymoon period to notice any weirdness; too busy making up for decades of lost time by making out on every surface that could hold their weight. _ Let’s take it slow, _ Eddie had said, and Richie had replied, _ Yeah, yeah, we’ll take it so slow, Eds, _ and then something went wrong because they’d been together less than a week before Eddie had Richie pinned to the bed, riding him roughly and slapping his face and yelling, “Yeah, yeah, you like that, you little bitch?” Which, apparently, was something that they were into.

Still, even after they’d exhausted themselves to the point where they had to take a few days off from sex to recover, Eddie was surprised by how easy Richie was to live with. One benefit of his being perennially single was that he’d more or less learned how to take care of himself. He could do laundry and cook meals and while he certainly made the apartment a lot messier than when Eddie had lived alone, he also made efforts to clean it up before it got too gross.

Richie slept funny. He would always start on his back with his limbs splayed out and his head tipped back, snoring obnoxiously loud. Then Eddie would hit him with a pillow and Richie would groan and turn over onto his stomach and the snoring would stop. One time Eddie came home late from a work party and found Richie in bed, lying straight and stiff as a board, the sheets beneath him soaked through with sweat. When Eddie sat down next to him and said his name, Richie thrashed awake wildly, and then grabbed Eddie and held him for a long time, his whole body shaking.

From that point on, Eddie made a point of never letting Richie go to sleep alone.

They’d been living together for about two months when Eddie came home, exhausted from a long day at the office juggling his actual work and yelling down the phone at Myra to do her part to finalize the endless paperwork associated with divorce (this time it was closing their joint bank account). He sagged through the door and turned the corner to find Richie cooking a stir fry, completely naked except for a too-small apron that said KISS THE CHEF.

“Oh god,” Eddie groaned, only half-joking. “I can’t. It’s too fucking early.”

“It’s getting dark out,” Richie replied sweetly.

“You’re going to get oil burns in some weird places and I’m not going to help you with them.”

“Please, you act like I’ve never made stir fry naked bef- OW!” Richie jumped away from the pan as it spit a hot droplet of oil onto his arm. 

Eddie tried his best to bite down on his anxiety, but he couldn’t help it that his entire job revolved around risk analysis. Richie glanced over at him and seemed to read his mind.

“I know, I know, the kitchen is the most dangerous room in the house.”

“It’s actually the bathroom,” Eddie corrected, unable to help himself, but at least holding back from reciting the statistics.

“You’re just saying that because a psycho stabbed you in a bathroo- FUCK!”

“Oh my god, move,” Eddie sighed, walking over to the stove and barging Richie out of the way. He carefully put an oven glove on each hand and took over stirring the meat and vegetables. Richie only stayed away for a moment before crowding up behind Eddie, hooking his chin over his shoulder and kissing his cheek.

“Welcome home,” he said gently, a rare moment of softness. Eddie risked looking away from the stir fry to turn his head and catch Richie’s mouth, a pleasant warmth spreading through him as he did so.

“Thanks,” he murmured in reply.

Later, when they were both full of too much food and feeling lazy, they shared the ugly couch - each on their own laptop, Eddie’s feet up on the coffee table and Richie lying lengthways, his feet in Eddie’s lap. Eddie rested his laptop on Richie’s shins and absent-mindedly massaged one of his bare feet as he scrolled through his emails one-handed. 

After a long period of nothing but silence and the occasional tapping of keys, Richie suddenly announced, “I gotta come out.”

Eddie lifted his laptop off Richie’s shins.

“No, dumbass.” Richie kicked him in the thigh with a grin. “I mean like, come _ out. _ I’m thinking of throwing a one-man pride parade, what do you think?”

“I think you’d get a fine for the unauthorised parade float and a whole lot of New York taxi drivers honking their horns at you.” Eddie folded the lid of his laptop down and set it aside, recognising a serious conversation when he saw it. “You sure? You don’t have to do that for me.” 

Eddie hated PDA anyway, so Richie being in the closet didn’t have much impact on their appearances together in public.

“No, I want to do it for me.” Richie sighed theatrically. “It’s just going to be awkward as _ fuck _ because I’m forty fucking years old. Who the fuck comes out at forty? It’s embarrassing. No one’s even going to care, I’m so saggy and old.”

Eddie rubbed his ankle, grinning. “So you’re scared to come out because you don’t think it’s going to trend?”

“Exactly. What if I tweet it right before a video of a dog playing the piano goes viral? People will forget so fast I’ll probably have to come out all over again to remind them.”

Eddie knew Richie enough to know that he was lying about why he was really scared of coming out. In bed, in the dark, late at night, they’d both confessed in hushed whispers about how Pennywise had tormented them. Eddie knew how much Richie’s “dirty little secret” had twisted him up inside - enough to force him into thirty years of dating girls he wasn’t really interested in and making dirty jokes about eating pussy on stage.

Nudging Richie with his hip to force him to make room, Eddie lay down next to him on the couch, their faces turned together. Richie’s eyelids drooped, always the first sign that he was turned on, and he angled his face towards Eddie, who leaned in to kiss him while also snagging Richie’s phone from the coffee table. Still kissing him, he fumbled open the phone’s camera, stretched his arm out, and snapped a photo of them.

“You sneaky fucker,” Richie mumbled against his mouth, not sounding particularly bothered. 

Eddie grinned. “There,” he said. “Tweet that photo, caption it with something unambiguous, and ignore the internet for a few days. You’re out.”

“Man with a plan,” Richie said. He took his phone from Eddie and together they looked at the photo. 

There was a moment of silence.

“Oh god…”

“My _ chins! _ I have like eight chins in this photo!”

“My scar looks like a fucking vagina. _ Exactly _ like a fucking vagina, the way it’s creased…”

“Hey, come watch our porno, starring Vag-Face and the Million Chins.”

“Delete it, fucking delete it before it goes into the Cloud…”

“I’m doing it, die die _ die, _ motherfucker.”

It took several minutes of experimentation to figure out which was their best collective side, a lighting adjustment, about three dozen photos of unconvincing fake kissing where one or both of them were side-eyeing the camera, and Eddie eventually looking up an article on how to take a flattering selfie, but eventually they figured out the right angle, picked a photo they miraculously both looked OK in, and slapped a filter on it. Richie showed it to Eddie for his approval.

“Yeah,” Eddie said, after a few long seconds, sounding almost surprised. “Yeah, I like that. Tweet it?”

“Tweeting it.”

Richie visibly steeled himself, chewed his lip, tapped out something on his phone and then slammed his thumb down on the Tweet button before he could change his mind. He sucked in a huge breath and threw his phone at Eddie, who picked it up and looked at the screen.

Richie had captioned the photo: _ guess what, fuckers. _

“Steve’s going to fucking kill me,” Richie said, sounding almost gleeful.

“He can’t kill you if he can’t call you,” Eddie said, turning the phone off and tackling Richie down onto the couch cushions.

They both knew that didn’t make any sense, and neither one of them cared.


	6. Chapter 6

Riche and Eddie ended up hosting the first of the Losers’ anniversary dinners. Though they’d all said they’d try to hang out more frequently, it just hadn’t happened - one of the perils of being adults with full-time jobs and busy schedules. So, when Ben and Beverly were the first to arrive at the condo, they brought a surprise with them.

“Holy shit,” was Richie’s reaction when Beverly took off her coat. “Uhhh, I don’t want to make any assumptions in case you just had a big lunch, but…”

“It’s a baby-baby, not a food baby, Rich,” Beverly said patiently, resting a hand on the underside of her bump and smiling affectionately at him. Some of the stereotypes were true; she really was glowing.

Bev stretched up on her toes to plant a kiss on Richie’s cheek and he hugged her very, very carefully. Then he socked Ben in the arm and said “You dog!” before pulling him in for a much less delicate hug.

Eddie was similarly stunned by the sight of Beverly’s stomach, but it was a sign of the progress he’d made that he didn’t come out with a bunch of statistics about the risk associated with pregnancy and start mansplaining to Beverly what supplements she should be taking. It was a sign of how far he still had to go that he was too terrified to hug Beverly at all and instead shook her hand gingerly. When she moved past him he flattened himself against the wall for fear of accidentally bumping her.

After a year of habitation, the condo was a lot less depressing and a lot more homey. The ugly fashionable couch had a throw on it and mismatched cushions, there was a comforting level of clutter, and they’d replaced the generic cookie-cutter art on the walls with movie posters and colorful pieces that Eddie had found at artist markets (carefully inspecting the canvases and frames for woodworm and mold before allowing them into the apartment). The fridge had assorted magnets and notes and postcards from Mike, and the slow-cooker was filling the air with the delicious smell of lamb and thyme.

The other Losers arrived one by one. Mike had a beard and had grown his hair out into a small ‘fro during his travels, and Bill looked younger than when they’d last seen him - some of the pain and tension gone from around his eyes. Things were raucous at first, with everyone making fun of each other and (except for Richie and Beverly) drinking, and then they split off into smaller groups. Eddie busied himself with food in the kitchen and exchanged divorce horror stories with Bev, who had Ben standing comfortingly at her back with his arms wrapped around her. Meanwhile, Richie settled on the couch with Bill and Mike.

“Didn’t get a chance to say, but I’m really happy for you guys, man,” Mike said warmly, putting an arm on Richie’s shoulder and gesturing at Eddie with his chin. “I mean, you must fight like wildcats, but…”

“But the sex afterwards is great,” Richie finished, and Bill accidentally inhaled a noseful of beer.

“I should fucking hope so, considering all the foreplay we had to sit through,” Mike shot back with a grin.

“Oh my god, that was not foreplay…

“Oh, it was foreplay.”

Richie considered his years of back-and-forth shit-talking with Eddie. “OK, maybe it was foreplay.”

“We watched your last special,” Bill said, possibly just trying to get them off the topic of foreplay. “Audra wasn’t a big fan of your old stuff but she really loves the jokes now that you’re writing them. She keeps bugging me to get you cast in a movie with her.”

“Wow, that’s so sweet of you, Bill, to ask me to come to L.A. and please your wife…”

“Aaand there it goes, there goes your acting career, before it even started,” Bill said with an exaggerated sigh, miming like he was shutting a window.

There was a moment of contented silence, during which Richie looked over at the three in the kitchen.

“It’s weird, isn’t it?” he said. “How none of us ever had kids. Then we kill the clown and now Beverly’s got a little baby Loser on the way.”

Bill cleared his throat. “Actually, it’s uh… it’s not just Bev.”

Mike and Richie stared at him. Bill grinned sheepishly. He reached over to his jacket and pulled his wallet out, and then drew a folded piece of paper out of it. Richie snatched it rudely out of his hand and stared down at the blobby black-and-white image, with a bulbous head and smaller body just visible.

“You mother-FUCKER!” he yelled delightedly, throwing the picture at Mike and getting Bill into a headlock. “You spawned a little mini-Bill? Now everyone’s going to know you ejaculated inside a woman, Denbrough.”

Bill jabbed him the ribs, trying to escape. “You’re forty-fucking-one years old, Trashmouth, can you get it together?”

“You’re the one that got it together, you little perv.”

The commotion brought Ben and Beverly back from the kitchen and they all took a moment to admire the photo of Bill’s weird blobby child. Leaning over the back of the couch, Mike nudged Richie in the shoulder.

“What about you, Tozier? You and Eddie got any surprises for us.”

Eddie dropped something in the kitchen.

“You mean you can’t tell?” Richie asked, sticking his belly out and placing his hands on it. “I’m eight months along, ‘bout to pop any second.”

“Oh my god, you’re glowing,” Mike fired back, pivoting around the couch, kneeling down and pressing his ear to Richie’s stomach.

“Yeah, you feel it kicking?”

“I do, it’s magical.”

“You know, it’s the breast-feeding I’m really looking forward to.”

“Lucky kid, look at these man-titties.” Mike started pushing the sides of Richie’s chest together to try and make cleavage.

“If you’re all done playing with Richie’s titties, the food’s ready,” Eddie called.

They all sat down at the table. Eddie had laid a seventh place for Stan, and by turns throughout dinner they all looked over at it, a little sadness crossing their faces. But it was OK to be sad about Stan. It was important. It wouldn’t be a real meeting of the Losers’ Club without a place for Stan.

The night wound down slowly, starting with them all yelling over each other and shit-talking, and ending with them all sat on the floor on cushions pulled from the couch, Ben and Beverly sharing a blanket around their shoulders, and Eddie - exhausted from a long day of anxiety as he prepared the condo for guests - lying down with his head in Richie’s lap and dozing off. At around 1am they called it a night, with Ben, Beverly and Bill all heading back to their hotel rooms, and Richie making up a bed for Mike on the couch.

“Night, travelin’ man,” he said, patting Mike on the shoulder in farewell.

“Night, Rich,” Mike slurred, already half-asleep.

Tired as he was, Eddie didn’t neglect his nighttime routine. Richie found him in their ensuite bathroom, leaning heavily on the sink as he robotically cleaned his teeth with his electric toothbrush. Suddenly overwhelmed with affection at the sight, Richie touched Eddie’s hip and kissed the back of his neck before picking up his own toothbrush. Some of Eddie’s habits had rubbed off on him (mainly because Eddie was reluctant to kiss when Richie hadn’t brushed his teeth).

In bed, Richie sprawled across Eddie’s chest for a while, kind of idly rubbing Eddie’s dick through his pyjama pants while Eddie made sleepy, contented noises. They were at a familiar tipping point where they could have sex or fall asleep with similar ease. Then, out of the blue, Eddie said:

“You wanna have kids?”

Richie angled his head up, resting his chin on Eddie’s chest. “That an invitation?” he purred. He rolled fully on top of Eddie, picking up Eddie’s legs and throwing them around his own waist, and humping him in a dirty mockery of actual fucking. “Want me to try and knock you up, Eds? ‘Cause I’ll try. I’ll try all night if we have to...”

Eddie huffed a laugh, somewhat reluctantly grabbing Richie’s hips to still them.

“No, asshole. I mean like, adopting or getting a surrogate or whatever.”

Richie paused, then rolled off him - though he didn’t go far.

“Fuck,” he said, also grabbing Eddie’s hand to reassure him. “This really a conversation for 2am?”

Eddie shrugged into the pillow. “Maybe the best time to have it,” he suggested.

Richie desperately tried to think of a way to derail the seriousness with a joke, but then decided against it. He was suddenly filled with anxiety about why Eddie was asking. Was he feeling broody after seeing Bev’s baby bump and Bill’s ultrasound photo? Did he want to start looking for a baby of their own right away? It wasn’t exactly fast; they’d been together a year and neither of them were getting any younger but…

“I don’t know if I want to have kids,” Richie blurted out. “I don’t… I don’t think I do? Oh fuck, man, don’t break up with me. I’ll have a kid if you want one, I just…”

“Rich,” Eddie said softly, squeezing his hand. “It’s fine.”

“No, really…”

“I don’t think I want kids either.”

Richie felt some of the tension tease out of his body. “Oh.”

“I have thought about it. And like… I don’t want to pass on all my shit to a kid. I mean my anxiety, and my health stuff, and all that shit. I think I’d try to keep it under wraps but I’d end up passing it on anyway. I don’t want to do to another kid what my mom did to me.”

Richie stared up at the ceiling. After a silence, he added, “And I’m a fucking alcoholic.”

“And you’re a fucking alcoholic.”

He hadn’t actually had a drink in over three months. Richie had come home falling-down drunk one night and Eddie had spent half the night rubbing his back as he puked into the toilet. When Richie woke up the next morning, the only real memory he had was of Eddie’s concerned and even frightened face and… yeah. He’d stopped. They hadn’t made a big deal about it, and he hadn’t gone to AA, but he knew enough about AA to know that you never really stopped being an alcoholic. Richie would probably fall off the wagon again, and when he did it was bad enough that Eddie would have to deal with it. Richie didn’t want a kid in the mix as well.

Eddie sighed, like he was relieved that Richie agreed, and rolled on top of him, kissing him. “We’d be horrible fucking parents,” he mumbled into Richie’s mouth.

“The worst,” Richie agreed.

They had sex then, quickly and quietly, to seal the deal. Afterwards, with Eddie all wrapped up in his arms, Richie contemplated the ceiling fan and said:

“I think we could handle a dog, though.”


	7. Chapter 7

It wasn’t really any one thing that caused the break-up. It started with one fight, seethed at each other in measured volumes because they didn’t want to scare the dog by yelling, and at the end of the fight they both stalked off into separate rooms and no one apologized. Then the next day they had another fight, and it was lit underneath by the previous day’s unresolved tension, so it was so much nastier and more intense than the subject matter really warranted. And that carried on for about a week until:

“Well if you hate having me around so much then why don’t I just fucking leave?” Richie snapped, in an unconvincing parody of his I-don’t-give-a-shit voice.

“Yeah, why don’t you?” Eddie shot back, his face twisted in anger.

“Fine, I fucking will.”

“Good!”

“We’re fucking done.” Richie’s voice had a warning edge to it now, with just a bit of panic underneath.

“Guess so, thanks for the memories, bye!” Eddie had turned his back.

Richie huffed disbelievingly. “I can’t believe I put up with your  _ shit _ for so long.”

“Well, you don’t have to put up with my shit any more. Door’s right there.”

Richie grabbed his jacket and stormed down the hall. “Fuck you!” he called back over his shoulder, before slamming the door behind him.

“FUCK YOU!” Eddie screamed back, loud enough that he knew Richie would hear him.

Silence followed. Eddie dropped onto the couch, his cheeks red and his heart pounding with residual fury. There was a soft, pathetic whine from under the coffee table, and guilt cascaded over Eddie, washing away his anger. 

“Hey hey hey,” he said softly, reaching his hand down and holding it near Buttercup’s face. “Hey, it’s OK, I’m sorry.”

There was a snuffling at his fingers, then a tentative licking, which Eddie took as permission to scratch her on the head. He gently pulled the stout little pitbull out from under the table and lifted her up onto his lap, wrapping his arms around her. The warm, comforting weight of her broke something inside him and he started crying silently. Buttercup stretched up and licked the salty tears off his face - something that Eddie would have been horrified by if he was in his right mind.

They’d gone down to the dog shelter to see what was available, looking for a small toy dog, like a pug or a Pomeranian or a French bulldog. But then they’d spotted Buttercup, slouched in the corner of her kennel, her ribs showing through her fur and her face full of partly-healed bite wounds, looking like the picture of misery. She had been used as a bait dog in an illegal dog-fighting ring and was terrified of pretty much everything and everyone. They’d both stopped outside the kennel, looking in at her until Richie said:

“Oh yeah. That’s our dog.”

The first day after they got her home, she hid under the desk in the office and wouldn’t come out. They had to bring her food to her in there, and clean up several puddles of pee (Richie had to do that part, since Eddie was horrified by the thought of touching dog pee). Eventually they managed to get a leash on her and take her outside to do her business. 

Eddie had gone into a bit of a panic spiral about what they’d taken on, but Richie’s lackadaisical attitude had been a counterweight to Eddie’s worry and between them they’d managed to coax Buttercup out of her shell. She was still nervous and prone to hiding, but when she was relaxed she would roll on her back with her tongue lolling out of her mouth in a happy grin, letting them rub her belly. 

Was she Eddie’s dog now? Was that how it worked? There hadn’t been a custody battle with Myra. Breaking up with Richie would be more complicated.

Oh fuck. He’d broken up with Richie.

Eddie scratched Buttercup behind the ears and cried.

The first night after they broke up, Richie bought a bottle of bourbon, booked a hotel room, drank most of the bottle and then spent the night being tormented by his visions from the Deadlights. He woke up dry-mouthed, head pounding, still sobbing and soaked in sweat. He remembered that Eddie was alive, and then he remembered why he was sleeping in a hotel, and then he drank the rest of the bourbon.

Three days later, Eddie still hadn’t heard from Richie. He’d started to text him a hundred times, but he didn’t know what to say. He could ask Richie to come and pick up his shit, but that would mean it was  _ really _ over. He could apologize, but Eddie was still kind of angry, and he knew that taking the blame for their fight would just cause the resentment to bubble up again before long.

Eddie thought about texting Richie just to ask if he was OK. Then he came home from work and found that some of Richie’s clothes were gone, the drawers still haphazard where he had pulled them open, and his suitcase missing from under the bed. The sight filled Eddie with such a sudden rage that he had to grab a pillow off the bed and scream into it, muffling the sound so Buttercup wouldn’t get scared.

He fucking  _ missed _ Richie. He missed waking up with Richie’s warm body next to him. He missed bumping elbows while they brushed their teeth because Richie always brushed with his left hand. He missed Richie texting him while he was on the way home to ask what takeout Eddie wanted, so it would be waiting for him when he got back. He missed sitting at opposite ends of the couch on their laptops, touching toes. He missed Richie’s weight on his back, Richie’s mouth on his neck, missed Richie’s legs wrapped around his waist. He missed everything except for the arguing - and even that was starting to seem unimportant in hindsight.

He missed Richie being the one to pick up Buttercup’s poop.

Three days after Richie snuck home to pick up his clothes, Eddie was wincing as he picked up Buttercup’s still-warm turd through three layers of doggy bag. He disposed of it as quickly as possible, rubbed sanitiser vigorously over his hands, and then tied Buttercup up outside the nearest 7-Eleven while he went in to pick up some milk.

Gritting his teeth for no particular reason, Eddie was about to head to the checkout when, over the top of a shelf, he saw Richie. And Richie had turned at the same time and seen him, so there was no escaping.

Richie looked  _ bad. _ His hair was greasy and mussed, his face stubbly and sagging, dark circles under his eyes. He was wearing a shirt with food stains on it and a pair of baggy sweats. He swayed a little on the spot as he stared at Eddie, like he wasn’t sure if he was really seeing him.

Eddie swallowed, then walked around into Richie’s aisle and approached him slowly. He glanced down into Richie’s basket, expecting to see booze, only to find it full of energy drinks and a big jar of instant coffee and several boxes of caffeine pills.

“Studying for finals?” Eddie asked, like an asshole.

“Fuck,” Richie sighed. He didn’t even sound angry, just exhausted and miserable and defeated. Eddie couldn’t blame him; there really wasn’t anything worse than running into an ex when you hadn’t showered for a few days. 

Was that what Eddie was? Richie’s ex?

“Fuck,” Eddie said, equally softly. He looked down at Richie’s basket again. “You know that shit’s not good for you, right?”

Richie shrugged loosely. “Better for me than sleepin’ right now.”

“You really think those cans of Monster are going to keep you awake indefinitely?”

“No, that’s why I also bought coke.”

Eddie frowned down at the basket. He didn’t see any…

Oh. Right.

“You’re such a stupid asshole,” Eddie said, without much heat. “Come on. Leave the basket.”

Richie blinked druggedly. “Nah, I should…”

“Put the fucking basket down and come with me, dickwad.”

Some fire returned to Richie’s eyes then. He glared at Eddie and spat, “You don’t get to fucking talk to me like that any more. We’re not…” His voice wavered and trailed off.

Eddie’s chest heaved, but he managed to say, “I was calling you a dickwad before we got together and I’m sure as shit not going to stop now we’re…” He forced himself to say it. “Now we’re broken up.”

A muscle in Richie’s jaw flexed as he clenched his teeth. He set the basket down on the floor.

Outside, Buttercup started running around in excited, anxious little circles when she saw Richie. His expression crumpled a little upon seeing her and he knelt down so that she could lick his face.

“Hey, baby girl,” he said, a little muffled from keeping his lips together so she wouldn’t accidentally get her tongue in his mouth. “You miss me?”

Eddie untied her leash and wrapped it around his hand. “Come on,” he said again.

Richie looked up at him, the haggardness of his face particularly apparent under the harsh streetlights. “Where?”

Eddie bit down on the word  _ home. _ “Back to the apartment,” he said.

A glimmer of longing appeared in Richie’s eyes, before he seemed to shake it free. “I don’t live there any more, Eddie.”

Resisting the sudden urge to kick him, Eddie said in a cold voice, “You need to sleep, Rich. Just ‘cause you’re not my boyfriend any more, doesn’t mean I want to read a headline about you ending up dead from an overdose because you tried to stay awake for a week.”

Upon hearing the word ‘sleep’, Richie had swayed on the spot, looking suddenly desperate. He clenched his fists, stood up, and said, “Fine.”

Richie stood in the center of the apartment, looking around at the spotless surfaces. “Wow, you really cleaned up,” he said, an edge to his voice despite the weariness. “Guess you’re glad you don’t have to pick up my shit any more.”

Eddie didn’t reply. He took off Buttercup’s leash and she trotted over to her dog bed and stepped around in a circle several times before settling down with a huff. Richie stared at her like he was jealous.

“Upstairs, Rich,” Eddie said, leading the way.

Richie followed him to the bedroom and then stood with his hands in his pockets, staring with undisguised longing at the bed. Eddie pointed at it, raising his eyebrows, then retreated to the bathroom to clean his teeth.

When he got back out, Richie was under the covers, his sweats and jacket discarded in a messy pile on the floor. His eyelids were already drooping, but he grew a little more alert when Eddie returned.

Turning out the lights and sliding into the bed next to him, Eddie said, “This doesn’t mean we’re back together.”

“Right.”

“It’s just so you can get some fucking sleep. You look like shit.”

“Thanks, man. I’ve really missed the sweet talk.”

They didn’t talk about the fact that this wasn’t a long-term solution. They didn’t talk about anything after that, in fact. Within five minutes Richie was asleep, his limbs sprawled out, head tipped back, snoring. Eddie shoved him and he groaned and rolled over onto his side, then went straight back to sleep.

For Eddie, staring up at the ceiling with his stomach churning and a tangle of feelings inside his chest, it took a little longer.

When he woke up, daylight was seeping in through the gap in the curtains. Richie was still sleeping, but at some point he had rolled over to face Eddie and one of his arms was stretched out over the bed, as if reaching out for him. His face was calm, though. No nightmares.

Despite what he’d said last night, Eddie had a sudden longing to just… pretend the break-up had never happened. What had changed, really? So a few of Richie’s clothes were in a hotel room somewhere. But he was here, now, in their bed, in their home, where he belonged. It would be so easy to go back. Except…

Richie stirred. He rubbed his face into the pillow, and Eddie hurriedly closed his eyes and feigned sleep so that Richie wouldn’t know he’d been watching him like a creep. After a minute or two he began to wonder if Richie had gone back to sleep, but then he felt Richie touch his hand, and heard a deep sigh before Richie’s weight disappeared from the mattress beside him.

For a moment, Eddie was terrified that Richie was just going to walk out and go straight back to his hotel, but then the bathroom door closed with a soft click and, shortly after, he heard Richie starting to piss. Eddie finally sat up, then, and swung his legs over the side of the bed and stared at the slightly parted curtains. He didn’t turn around when Richie emerged from the bathroom.

“Guess I’ll take off,” Richie said, softly.

Eddie gripped the edge of the mattress. “You can, uh. Come back if you need to sleep.”

Richie snorted. “Yeah, and how long do you think I’m gonna put that on you? I’m not going to be a fucking burden. You don’t owe me anything.”

Eddie did stand up then, suddenly angry, storming over to glare at Richie. “I owe you my fucking  _ life. _ If you hadn’t pushed me out of the way down there, Pennywise would have…”

“And you saved my life,” Richie snapped, interrupting. “So I guess we’re all squared away.” He took a challenging step closer. “So what other excuses do you have, huh?”

Eddie stared up into his face defiantly. “I guess none.”

There was a beat, during which tension crackled in the air. Richie’s expression wavered, suddenly uncertain.

“Uh. Are we going to kiss?”

Eddie shoved him in the chest. “No, we’re not going to fucking kiss!”

“I’m sorry, there was a weird energy!”

“Did you forget that you broke up with me?”

Richie made a strangled noise of outrage. “You told me to go!”

“I did not!”

“Well, you definitely didn’t try to stop me.”

“Don’t fucking put this on me. I’m not going to go chasing after you like some little bitch. If you want to come back, you say so.”

“Fine, shithead, I want to come back!”

“Good, great choice.”

“Thanks.”

They stood there glaring at each other again. This time it was Eddie whose conviction broke first. “Are we…?”

Richie didn’t let him finish. He grabbed Eddie’s head and kissed him desperately, smearing their mouths together. He had awful morning breath.

The best part about breaking up was definitely the make-up sex. Eddie was glad that he’d gotten to experience it at least once, and at the same time hoped he’d never experience it again. It was passionate and intense, him rocking in Richie’s lap, their bodies wrapped together like they were terrified they would drift apart if they let go. Richie cried when it was over, his face pressed against Eddie’s chest, and Eddie held onto him and stroked his greasy hair.

They showered together afterwards, Richie rubbing shampoo into Eddie’s hair and massaging his scalp at the same time in a way that felt like an apology. Eddie used Richie’s loofah (he insisted on them both having their own loofahs, though he suspected that Richie sometimes used his) to scrub the sweat and grime from Richie’s body, lifting his arms to get at his armpits, lathering soap through the hair on his chest. 

Eddie put clean clothes on and went downstairs, giving Buttercup her breakfast before fixing some eggs. Richie padded across the room to join him a while later, touching Eddie’s shoulder a little tentatively on his way to the espresso machine. Things still weren’t quite right, and they could both sense it.

It was Eddie who brought it up, over breakfast, pushing at his eggs with his fork. “We can’t just pretend like nothing happened,” he said quietly. “We’re probably going to fight again.”

Richie nodded morosely. “Probably.”

“What if we break up again?”

“I don’t want to break up with you. I never did.”

“But you did anyway.”

“Fuck, Eds, I was just bluffing.”

“Yeah, dipshit, and then I called your bluff and you fucking left. For real.”

Richie sat back in his chair and sighed. He still looked kind of exhausted. “I almost miss the days when we had to worry about fighting a killer demon clown. Things were simpler then.” He picked up a bit of bacon from his plate and tossed it to Buttercup.

Eddie clenched his fists, his temper rising. “I can’t fucking believe you.”

Richie blinked. “What?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’? That’s how the whole fucking fight started in the first place! I  _ told _ you not to feed her at the table. I’m trying to teach her to behave and you  _ fuck it all up _ by giving her bacon when she begs.”

“ _ That’s _ what we fought about?” Richie asked incredulously.

“That’s how it started!”

“Fuck. I actually forgot.” Richie stared at the table. “I walked out over that?”

“Yeah, you did.”

“Wow. Seems kind of stupid now.” 

Richie considered for a moment, and then looked down at Buttercup, who was shifting from paw to paw, staring up at him with wide puppy eyes and whining. 

“No,” Richie said sternly. “Bad dog.” He pointed over at her bed and in the same tone said, “Go lie down.”

Buttercup continued to stare at him beseechingly.

Eddie, oddly touched by Richie’s gesture, interjected, “Just ignore her. That’s what the book said.”

“You bought a book?”

“I’ll show it to you later.”

They ate the rest of their breakfast in easy silence. After a while, Buttercup padded over to the rug and dropped down onto her belly, putting her head on her paws. Her days of bacon at the breakfast table were over.


End file.
